All the Feelings Tanka

(FYI: The following is the first installment of Realm of Contagious Stupidity, an ongoing series of contemporary, satirical kyōka examining modern culture and politics.

Realm of Contagious Stupidity, I

In response to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Against stupidity we are defenseless."

at the gallery

a plane mirror with a sign:

the DUMBEST --

no one stands before it

except a Trump lookalike

FYI: The Guardian, Oct. 2 2025: A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out?)

I was told

to hide all the feelings

once grown --

carrying this silver casket

I shed tears for her, and me

NeverEnding Story, July 24 2026

FYI: This could be read as a sequel to my tanka below:

with each sob

his body convulses …

in the hospital

for the first time

I embrace a man

Ribbons, 7:4, Winter 2011

Added:

my brain humming 

with scraps of Sappho  

while Eros stirs ...

"I'll be a poet," I confess

to my river reflection

Added: This Brave New World, CXXVIII

another lineup

round the block near a foodbank

wall-mounted TV

blasting "sunlight on demand"

"orbiting data centers"

FYI: The Tyee, July 23 2026: 

Reflect Orbital's giant mirror to create “sunlight on demand” was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,

In February, SpaceX filed with the FCC for one million more satellites, for “AI data centers.”

Added:

dust motes  

in slanted moonlight—  

I settle  

into what remains

after bankruptcy

Flash Flooding Haiku

flash flooding ...

this trail of grief and yet

mud-stained marigolds 

 

The Solitary Daisy, 57, 2025

Fragmented Heart

my Jewish friend

turns off the TV and asks

in barely a whisper

can one's fragmented heart

contain two pains at once?

Take 5ive, "Inclusivity," 2024

Unnamed Grief Haiku

aftermath of floods

the trail of this

unnamed grief

NeverEnding Story, July 4 2024

FYI: This is could be read as a sequel to the following haiku:

flashfloodallboundariesdissolve

Haiku Quarterly, 1:1, 1989

Marian Olson

And BBC News, June 17, 2024: How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXXVI: "Gaza's safe zone"

written in response to Associated Press News, July 3: Life and death in Gaza’s ‘safe zone’ where food is scarce and Israel strikes without warning

mule-drawn wagons

wind past one mound of rubble

after another ...

across the bottom of my screen

scrolls the text: from here to nowhere

Added: Game Show, 2024, LIX

written in response to NBC News, July 3: Joe Biden says he’s ‘in this race to the end’ amid growing calls to drop out

end-of-the-race dream

the earth at its farthest point

from the sun

FYI: July 5 marks the earth’s aphelion - farthest point from the sun, a big astronomical milestone called aphelion. 

And The New Yorker, July 3: This Is What the Twenty-fifth Amendment Was Designed For

If Joe Biden doesn’t willingly resign, there’s another solution, which would allow Democrats to unite around a new incumbent.

Normal Life, A Soap Bubble

my friend turns forty

the age his father died

he mutters

the Grim Reaper haunts me

like my walking shadow

breaking news

at the first light of spring dawn

my friend's stooped back

bends a little further

from grief after grief

thick foggy air

with no sun visible

my friend murmurs

how many mornings are left

for me with something new

my friend dies

alone in his attic room

but the shade of death

has been always on his mind

since his mother hung herself

NeverEnding Story, May 5 2024

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXI: "aid worker"

please bury me

with no casket, no prayers

face down, away

from this shrapnel-filled world:

the note in an aid worker's hand

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXII: "Holocaust Remembrance Day "

written in response to Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day, evening of Sunday, May 5, 2024 – Monday, May 6, 2024, observed by  the State of Israel and many Jews around the world)

And inspired by the following remark by Marek Edelman, the deputy commander of the "Warsaw Ghetto" Uprising and the only leader to survive the war

To be a JEW means always being with the Oppressed and never the oppressors.

a standstill

for two minutes in Israel ...

fifty miles away

fighter jet after fighter jet

silencing everything below 

FYI: This is a sequel to my tanka below:

for Phil Chernofsky, author of And Every Single One Was Someone ("Holocaust Told in One Word, 6 Million Times," Jodi Rudoren's review)

line upon line

page after page

the word

Jew

six million times

NeverEnding Story, January 27, 2014

And in contrast with the following entry:

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, XI: "Holocaust"

written on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

in response to UN top court's/ICJ's genocide case against Israel ruling

and for Jewish Israelis 

Aftermath

blot out Amalek ...

clutching his bible a rabbi 

lost in thought 

Holocaust Remembrance

Together We Will Win

[peace... peace only]

candlelight virgil

a tattooed survivor holds

a Stop the War sign

NeverEnding Story, January 27, 2024

And The Nation, May 7: Biden Must Condemn Israel’s Attack on Al Jazeera—Now

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government shut down the network’s operations in Israel. Press freedom advocates are raising an outcry, and Americans should back them up.

Netanyahu’s decision—which came just two days after World Press Freedom Day—has been condemned by the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz (“Israel Must Not Shut Down Al Jazeera”) 

Middle East historian Assal Rad posted images from Rafah with the message, “This is why Israel is shutting down Al Jazeera. They don’t want us to see what they’re going to do in Rafah, the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza,” while former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said, “Israel’s banning of Al Jazeera is one aspect of its War On Truth. It aims at preventing Israelis from knowing what goes on in Gaza.”

Jagged Edge of Sorrow Tanka

written on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

my Kyiv friends and I

tiptoe around the jagged edge

of sorrow

at last the silence

envelopes each of us

NeverEnding Story, February 23 2024

FYI: For more, see Special Feature: "Selected Poems for the Second Anniversary of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine"

And LA Progressive, March 7, 2023: Don’t Forget the Private Sorrows of Ukraine

When we consider how important our own sorrows are to each of us, we should pause longer to reflect on all the deaths, maiming, and other tragedies that wars inflict.

The best quote I’ve discovered about war is from Ian McEwan’s novel Black Dogs (1993). His main character reacts to World War II in Europe:

He was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust…For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.

Trauma Dumping Tanka

this church group

once again trauma dumping 

on each other ...

the closeness between their bodies

the distance   between their hearts

NeverEnding Story, September 24 2022

Added: 

the sound of fury

a row of houses dragged out

to sea by the storm

FYI: USA Today, September 24: 'I'm seeing homes in the ocean': Fiona makes devastating landfall in Atlantic Canada

...The Canadian Hurricane Centre called Fiona a "historic storm for eastern Canada" and a "potential landmark weather event" in a region where hurricanes are relatively rare...

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, XXIX

a big stuffed monkey

stapled to the railings

of a bridge that leads

to the oldest Black town ...

my wife holds my hand tighter

Added: Game Show 2024, VII

written in response to Insider, Sep. 24: Donald Trump shares Truth Social photo proclaiming him as second only to Jesus

in dim light

I'm the second greatest 

second greatest ...

he mumbles, staring at Jesus

on the wall of his psych room

FYI: Trump has made these grand proclamations himself. In August 2019, Trump told reporters in reference to trade with China: "I am the chosen one." He also shared tweets describing him as the "King of Israel" and "the second coming of God." ...Insider, Sep. 24

Added:

Women, Life, Freedom

painted in red letters 

across topless women's' chests ...

Iranian Embassy

in the gathering dark

FYI: Today we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights...

-- President Joe Biden, UN General Assembly Speech

FYI: CBC News, September 26: Iran accuses U.S. of trying to exploit unrest over death of Mahsa Amini and Democracy Now, September 27: “Women! Life! Freedom!” Iranian Women Lead Nationwide Protests After Death of Mahsa Amini

Over the past two weeks:

76 people killed 

More than 1,200 people arrested (at least 20 journalists arrested covering the protests)

Quicksand Tanka

my friend's grief

for his lost homeland

drags me down like quicksand ...

this dark cave

of my immigrant life

Shot Glass Journal, 37, 2022

Selected Tanka: Emptiness Tanka

inspired by the 9/11  Memorial Fountain

at the footprint
of each tower that once stood
vast emptiness
( loss and grief ) surrounded
by four walls of water

NeverEnding Story, September 12, 2016

After 9/11 Tanka

inspired by the 9/11  Memorial Fountain

at the footprint
of each tower that once stood
vast emptiness
( loss and grief ) surrounded
by four walls of water

NeverEnding Story, September 12, 2016

Indigo Night

a V of wild geese
soar into the sky

voices dripping with grief
drive me to walk

the rising harvest moon
weeps in silence

the cold mouth of night
utters no single word

Spring issue of Rust+Moth